Biting British Brutality.
Eastern Europe wilderness and the sales division of weapons company Palisade Defence are meant to be having a team building weekend. But once they reach their less than luxurious lodge out in the forest, it becomes apparent they are not alone...
We open with a chase that results in a brutal murder, all played out to the wonderful strains of The Small Faces singing "Itchycoo park," it's obvious from this moment that this is no ordinary horror comedy. Comedy as everyone knows is hugely subjective, even more so when it involves horror, some attempts have been roundly accepted such as parody supreme Shaun Of The Dead or nervous titillation in the Evil Dead series, while others are so bad they don't need a mention here. Severance, happily, is as sharp with its humour as one of the knives used in the piece itself, perfectly tuned into the modern world and the bizarreness of it all.
What started out as a working script called "P45", where Christopher Smith's film was to be about these "yuppie" types literally team building for a weekend where if they didn't pass the tests they lost their jobs, escalated to a slasher with a wry satirical edge. The characters, as the makers point out on the DVD, are the perfect blend of the archetypal office workers. Each of them can readily be found in any Brirtish office on any given day. The ineffective leader who's wormed his way into the position, the jocular wide boy, the creep, the babe attracting all the sexual attention and on it goes. Each character rich with British office traditions thrust together for one bubbling comedy stew.
Enter the central theme of weapons making companies firmly under the microscope and Severance has much to say. As a promo video made by the managing director plays, the irony is absolutely hilarious and sets the film up a treat. Even as the film gets bloody, and it's certainly bloody at times, the smiling assassin nature of the script continues to be bitingly funny. There's reams of clever jokes in the piece, so many in fact that even now after my third viewing experience I'm still finding new stuff. So with that I would urge anyone who has only seen it the one time, and been less than enamoured with the premise, to try again and observe and listen without interruption.
There's even self mocking of the genre it belongs in, and this from the director of 2004s culter, Creep. The cast are uniformly strong, from Tim McInnerny's weasel team leader portrayal to Danny Dyer's with type drug taking "cockernee" boy, all playing off each other with smart and mirth inducing results. A fine fine entry in the horror comedy pantheon, one that just gets better and better with each and every viewing. 9/10
